The Multi-Culti Barbarian

Theodore Dalrymple

"Has multicultural indoctrination made us less sensitive to the mores of different societies?"

What practical effect does multiculturalism have upon the conduct of those who have grown up with it?

At first sight, very little. Recently, for example, an 18-year-old British holidaymaker in Greece wound up arrested and thrown into jail briefly for exposing her breasts in public. She described her experience as "an absolute nightmare," but she also found the whole affair ridiculous, for she insisted that she had done nothing wrong in the first place.

It seems that despite long indoctrination in multiculturalist doctrine by school, the press, and television, she was unable to imagine that her conduct could upset anyone else. Nor had she taken any notice of reports that the Greek authorities were growing increasingly exasperated by the drunken, vulgar, and uninhibited behavior of young British tourists.

Her coarse behavior ultimately results from a cultural switch engineered by intellectuals over the last few decades: what was once considered laudable and comme il faut is now seen as ridiculous and even harmful, while what was once considered degraded and despicable is now seen as laudable and healthy. So, for example, the polite reserve, tinged with irony, once held to be the mark of a gentleman or lady have come under remorseless attack from people intolerant of restraint upon their own behavior--as have the very terms "gentleman" and "lady." Gentlemanly conduct also became suspect for political reasons, since the intellectuals deemed it characteristic of the upper and upper-middle classes--and therefore reactionary.